Think Again

CHAPTER 7
Vaccine Whisperers and Mild-
Mannered Interrogators
How the Right Kind of Listening Motivates People to Change
It’s a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn’t want to hear.
—
ATTRIBUTED
TO
DICK
CAVETT
hen Marie-Hélène Étienne-Rousseau went into labor, she broke
down in tears. It was September 2018, and her baby wasn’t due
until December. Just before midnight, Tobie arrived, weighing
just two pounds. His body was so tiny that his head could fit in the palm of
her hand, and Marie-Hélène was terrified that he wouldn’t survive. Tobie
spent only a few seconds in her arms before he was rushed to the neonatal
intensive care unit. He needed a mask to breathe and was soon taken to
surgery for internal bleeding. It would be months before he was allowed to
go home.
While Tobie was still in the hospital, Marie-Hélène was shopping for
diapers when she saw a headline about measles spreading in her province of
Quebec. She hadn’t had Tobie vaccinated. It wasn’t even a question—he
seemed too fragile. She hadn’t vaccinated her three other children, either; it
wasn’t the norm in her community. Her friends and neighbors took it for
granted that vaccines were dangerous and passed around horror stories
about their side effects. Still, the fact remained: Quebec had already had
two serious measles outbreaks that decade.

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Today in the developed world, measles is on the rise for the first time in
at least half a century, and its mortality rate is around one in a thousand. In
the developing world, it’s closer to one in a hundred. Estimates suggest that
from 2016 to 2018, measles deaths spiked worldwide by 58 percent, with
over a hundred thousand casualties. These deaths could have been
prevented by the vaccine, which has saved roughly 20 million lives in the
past two decades. Although epidemiologists recommend two doses of the
measles vaccine and a minimum immunization rate of 95 percent, around
the globe only 85 percent of people get the first dose and just 67 percent
continue to the second. Many of those who skip the shot simply do not
believe in the science.
Government officials have tried to prosecute the problem, some
warning that the unvaccinated could be fined up to a thousand dollars and
sentenced to jail for up to six months. Many schools shut their doors to
unvaccinated children, and one county even banned them from enclosed
public places. When such measures failed to solve the problem, public
officials turned to preaching. Since people held unfounded fears about
vaccines, it was time to educate them with a dose of the truth.
The results were often disappointing. In a pair of experiments in
Germany, introducing people to the research on vaccine safety backfired:
they ended up seeing vaccines as riskier. Similarly, when Americans read
accounts of the dangers of measles, saw pictures of children suffering from
it, or learned of an infant who nearly died from it, their interest in
vaccination didn’t rise at all. And when they were informed that there was
no evidence that the measles vaccine causes autism, those who already had
concerns actually became less interested in vaccinating. It seemed that no
logical argument or data-driven explanation could shake their conviction
that vaccines were unsafe.
This is a common problem in persuasion: what doesn’t sway us can
make our beliefs stronger. Much like a vaccine inoculates our physical
immune system against a virus, the act of resistance fortifies our
psychological immune system. Refuting a point of view produces
antibodies against future influence attempts. We become more certain of
our opinions and less curious about alternative views. Counterarguments no
longer surprise us or stump us—we have our rebuttals ready.
Marie-Hélène Étienne-Rousseau had been through that journey. Visits
to the doctor with her older kids followed a familiar script. The doctor

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extolled the benefits of vaccines, warned her about the risks of refusing
them, and stuck to generic messaging instead of engaging with her